Shubman Gill bags Polly Umrigar Award, Smriti Mandhana makes history with fifth BCCI honour

Mumbai, Monday: India opener Shubman Gill was officially crowned the country’s men’s international cricketer of the year for 2024-25 at the BCCI Naman Awards 2026 on Sunday, walking away with the coveted Polly Umrigar Award for the second time in his career. Gill’s first such honour came in 2023, and his encore confirms his rapid ascent as the batting mainstay of the Test and ODI sides.

The 25-year-old’s crowning season was headlined by a headline-grabbing tour of England, where he amassed 754 runs in ten innings of a five-Test series at an imposing average of 75.40. The right-hander struck four hundreds, the highlight being a career-best 269 that broke English resistance and powered India to a memorable series win. Gill’s appetite for big runs spilled into white-ball cricket as well; entering the Champions Trophy as the top-ranked ODI batter, he opened the campaign with an unbeaten 101 against Bangladesh and finished with 188 runs, playing a pivotal role in India’s title triumph.

Parallel to Gill’s heroics, Smriti Mandhana rewrote the record books on her way to a historic fifth Best International Cricketer (Women’s) award—an unprecedented feat in BCCI annals. The left-handed opener aggregated 1,703 runs across formats in 2025, with 1,362 of those coming in ODIs—the most by any woman in a single calendar year. Mandhana became the first female batter to breach the 1,000-run mark in ODI cricket within a year, underlining her consistency and appetite for match-winning knocks.

Her magnum opus arrived during India’s breakthrough Women’s World Cup campaign. Mandhana topped India’s charts with 434 runs in nine matches, finishing second overall in the tournament and propelling the side to its maiden global title. Earlier in the season, she stunned Australia with a 50-ball century in New Delhi—the fastest ODI hundred by an Indian, eclipsing Virat Kohli’s 52-ball record.

The glittering ceremony also paid tribute to three giants of Indian cricket. Former India captain and current BCCI president Roger Binny, ex-head coach Rahul Dravid, and women’s trailblazer Mithali Raj were conferred the Col. C. K. Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award, the board’s highest honour, for their immense contributions across eras.

With Gill cementing his place among modern greats and Mandhana setting fresh benchmarks for excellence, Indian cricket heads into the next cycle buoyed by two flag-bearers at the peak of their powers.